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Like many young servicemen and servicewomen from Wisconsin and from all states and from numerous countries, I defended my leaders’ chosen causes when I volunteered to enter the military in 1969. I then volunteered in basic training to go to Vietnam.

Some of my fondest memories of my military service are my many meetings with “my minister” before and after I applied for an Honorable Discharge as a Conscientious Objector in 1971.

He was a “bird colonel” who commanded respect, but was also a very kind, soft-spoken, gentle man.

He helped me clarify my changing morality.

I am still very grateful for his guidance.

And I will always honor all veterans, but I guess most personally the ONE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY FOUR Wisconsin veterans who sacrificed their lives during our Vietnam War.

Our United States citizens have always been told, “there are no diplomatic alternative left,” so our finest sons and daughters must again go to war as bravely as we did and our ancestors did.

And our U.S. leaders have always pledged that our finest sons and daughters bravely sacrificed their lives in foreign nations for something..."for our further freedom and democracy at home."

And our U.S. leaders and citizens still try to coerce more of our finest youths to defend more of their chosen causes and to attack more of their chosen foes.

And the U.S. has allocated $673 billion in "defense" spending for 2013.

And the majority of our U.S. citizens give 26% of all of their dollars taxed every year to “defense” spending.

And our majority of citizens only parrot to others that U.S. global military strength and expansionism and weapons productions and weapons sales will make us safer when instead the opposite is surely true.

And even our most patriotic and brave soldiers will not be able to protect us from our foreign blunders.

And even our most patriotic and brave soldiers will not be able to protect us from those who fear U.S. global military expansionism and from those who covet our sold weapons of mass destruction and from those who despise the arrogance of U.S. actions and its failed foreign policies.

And the U.S. is the supreme military and economic power behind a worldwide military-industrial complex.

And it is no surprise that our struggling U.S. and world economies, temporarily supported by weapons productions and sales, will continue to only flounder on by if...only if or "Masters of War" can fuel even more wars…even more foreign wars fueled by our failed foreign policies and with our sold weapons of mass destruction.

And when “world peace’ is somehow discovered and is somehow forced upon even the U.S., the worldwide military-industrial complex, led by the U.S., will collapse.

And this collapse will create a global economic depression and social upheaval that will put the “Great Depression” to shame.

Why?

Because this will be the price all world citizens will have to initially pay as we finally try to make right our past moral wrongs.